Diego Berrueta

Wiidra is a game that uses part of the Wii hardware, notably the world-famous Wiimote. The game simulates one of the most popular Asturian traditions, i.e, the way we pour our typical drink, the cider. If you don't know what "escanciar" means, please look to these photographs. As far as I know, this is very characteristic from Asturias. I had some funny last month when I tried to explain the meaning of "escanciar" to my colleagues of the SWD working group during the dinner after our recent f2f meeting in Amsterdam.

Back to the game... I think the best way to get an idea of how it works is to watch the demo recorded today by one national newspaper. The player holds in one hand a replica of the typical bottle of cider, and in the other one, the glass. His movements have a reflect in the screen. The objective, obviously, is to pour the liquid into the glass, but holding the bottle above your head, and the glass near your hip. Next to the screen, there is a device attached to the system that actually pours cider into a glass. That's the reward of the game: you can drink real cider if you manage to pour the exact amount of digital liquid into the virtual glass, without making a digital puddle.

As the report says, the whole system runs in a Linux box. It was developed from scratch by my workmates, in a short period of time. Although my face is among them in the video, my contribution was so small that it is insignificant (remember: my area of expertise is the semantic web, and there is no RDF at all in the whole game. I just happen to know a little bit about reading the Wiimote information from Linux). Therefore, the credit is all theirs.